Just Desserts

by Bill Bernico

I could tolerate quite a few things, if push came to shove, but the idea of my best friend stealing my wife was one that I could not let simmer on the back burner for long. I knew what I had to do; I just had to figure out how to do it so as not to leave a telltale trail for the police to follow to my front door.

I had to think this thing through thoroughly, running all the scenarios in my mind. If I did this, the cops would do that and if I did that, well, I just wanted to make sure I could walk away from it. I had no trouble with the idea of murder. I'd played out the scene in my mind a hundred times but each time there'd be a slip up and I'd get a mental picture of myself strapped to a chair with a pellet dropping into a bucket of cyanide.

No, if I wanted to get away with it, I'd have to be sure the body would never be found. Shooting? Quick and easy, but noisy. And now what do I do with the body? Stabbing? No good. That meant close personal contact and the feel of that knife blade sliding through flesh while my hand was wrapped around the handle. I'd vomit. Hit and run? Nope, they had ways of matching broken pieces of turn signal lights to a particular car. A fall from a high building? Forget it. Too messy. Besides, I'm afraid of heights. Drowning? No matter how much weight you tied to a body, it always seems to find a way back to the surface or up on the beach.

Wait a minute. Suppose the body never came back up. That was possible, I guess. Hell, not three hundred yards from my own house lay the perfect dumping place—the Pacific Ocean . Perfect. I could take him out a few miles and drop him over the side. Between the elements and the sharks, the police would never find a trace of Alvin Freeman. No body, no case. Pure and simple.

I'd heard of bodies washing ashore months after the fact, though. Even if Alvin 's face was unrecognizable, they had ways of matching dental records. Yank out all his teeth beforehand? Not this kid. No, if I was going to give Roger a burial at sea I'd have to make sure he never came back up—ever. Cement blocks tied to the feet has been done, I'm sure. Isn't that what Capone called “cement overshoes?” But what if his feet rotted away and the rest of him made it ashore? Overshoes, nothing! It had to be the entire ensemble—the cement overcoat.

My boat was a twenty-eight foot fishing boat. It was certainly big enough to handle the job. Even if it was forty-nine years old, it was still in fair shape. Fair enough for the job I had in mind anyway. All I had to do now was take Roger out in it without anyone else seeing us leave. That shouldn't be too hard.

There were several other parts to my plan that still needed to be worked out. Like how long does it take two cubic yards of cement to cure? And would it cure faster or slower at sea? Was there such a thing as quick-drying cement that would only take a couple of hours? How could I hide the bags of cement and the cement forms on the boat without Alvin getting wise? How would I actually kill Alvin before pouring on the cement?

I had two weeks to think about it, since my timetable called for getting Alvin aboard on the night of the seventeenth. Now to come up with a believable story. Let's see, a concocted story about an important meeting? I don't think so. He'd see through that in a minute. Maybe I could say that there's something I want him to see from my boat. He'd either want to know what was so important or he wouldn't come at all. I couldn't plan it ahead or he might mention the meeting to someone else. I couldn't leave any loose ends. It had to be a spur-of-the-moment, last minute idea. I could do it.

Ten days later, after I'd loaded my boat with the necessary items, I stopped by Alvin 's apartment when I knew he'd be alone. It was after midnight and the lights were on. I parked behind the apartment building and quietly climbed the twenty steps to 12-D. Alvin answered the door in his stocking feet but was fully dressed otherwise.

I closed the door behind me after looking both ways down his hallway. I held my index finger to my lips and leaned in close. “Get your shoes on, Al. I've got a major surprise. Hurry.”

Alvin frowned and started to open his mouth. I returned my finger to my lips again with a faint “Shhhhh” and crooked my finger at him. He slipped into his loafers, grabbed his jacket and followed me out the door and down to my car.

As we glided down the drive and out onto the street Alvin said, “Now will you tell me what's going on here?”

I just smiled. Alvin hated that when I smiled without talking, but I did it just the same. I waited a full minute for effect. Two minutes of smiling in silence and Alvin would have jumped out at the first stoplight.

“You won't believe it,” I said, trying to look mysterious.

“Believe what?” he said impatiently. “What the hell is so important that it can't wait until tomorrow?”

“You'll see,” I said. “You gotta trust me on this one, Al. It'll be worth the drive. Can we leave it at that?”

“No,” he said. There was anger in his voice now.

“Tell you what,” I said. “If after I'm done showing you my surprise you don't agree that it was worth a little inconvenience, I'll buy you desserts every night next week at anyplace you say. Hell, you can have cherry cheesecake seven times next week if you don't agree. But you will. Now, will you hold your opinion until we get there?”

Alvin looked at me queerly, ran his tongue over his bottom lip, tilted his head back and nodded. “Throw in dinners, too?”

“Just desserts,” I said.

Alvin thought about the cheesecake again. “Okay. But I might just say I didn't think it was worth it even if it was just to get the deserts. Then what?”

I glanced his way. “I'm not worried,” I said and shifted my eyes back to the road.

We pulled into the marina just north of the city limits. I parked the car and slid out. Alvin followed cautiously. His steps echoed mine as we light-footed along the pier to my boat. The area was quiet and deserted as I stepped aboard and waited. Alvin just stood there looking at me.

“Come on,” I whispered.

“Come on where,” Alvin asked.

“Seven days of cheesecake,” I reminded him, knowing he could no sooner resist cheesecake as I could resist revenge.

“Oh, for Christ sake,” Alvin said, stepping onto the boat.

I released the mooring lines and pushed away from the dock. The boat's quiet motor purred as we headed out to sea. Fifteen minutes later the lights of the city faded in the distance as Alvin tiptoed over to where I stood piloting the boat.

“Now will you tell me?” he demanded.

“We're almost there,” I said. “Just a few more minutes. Be patient, will you?”

Alvin sat next to me, his forearms resting on his knees. Every now and then he'd look up at me with that same question on his face. I'd just shake my head and go back to piloting the boat further out into the Pacific. Five more minutes of silence and I pulled back on the throttle and cut the engine. The boat glided to a stop and bobbed in the water like a cork. There wasn't a sound and the light of the full moon illuminated the deck.

Alvin stood facing me. “Okay, mystery man, what was so important that you had to drag me way out here in the middle of the night?”

“That,” I said, pointing to a portion of the sky behind Alvin . He turned to see what I was pointing at and I grabbed the eighteen-inch length of cast iron pipe that I'd brought along for the occasion. I laid it alongside Alvin 's head and he fell down with a thud. He lay there, dazed and blinking, trying to focus on my face. His mouth tried to form a W and I knew he was asking the big question—“Why?”

“You wanna know why,” I said, still holding the pipe. “Because of you and Stella.”

His eyes widened.

“That's right,” I said. “I know about you two. I've known for some time now. Did you really think I'd just let you waltz in and steal her from me? Think again, buddy boy. Here you go, pal. Just deserts.”

I brought the pipe down again just as his eyes closed. Alvin was all done messing with Stella. The hard part was done. Now came the manual labor part.

Killing Alvin was easier than I had imagined it to be. I thought I might back out at the last minute and take pity on him. Actually, it was the easiest thing I'd done in a long time and I felt no remorse at all. It felt good, I'm sorry to say, but I was glad he was dead.

I pulled back the large tarp that had covered my supplies. A six-foot sheet of metal that measured two feet across served as my work platform. I laid it across the rim of the bow with several bricks supporting the middle. On top of that I laid out sheet metal forms and fastened them in the pre-drilled holes with long metal screws and my battery-operated screwdriver. The two long pieces and two short pieces came together to form a coffin frame of sorts. I lifted Alvin from the deck and laid him out in the cement forms. He looked peaceful lying there with his hands folded across his chest.

I retrieved my fifteen-gallon tub from below and laid it next to the makeshift coffin. On previous trips out here with Alvin , it had held twenty-four bottles of beer and several bags of ice. Now it would serve as my cement mixer. I emptied three bags of quick-dry cement (I found out there was such a thing) in the tub and grabbed my bucket. It took six buckets of water to get the consistency I needed. I mixed it around with a hoe I'd brought just for the occasion. The bucket served double duty as I dipped it into the tub and brought back a bucket of cement and poured it on Alvin 's body. I kept pouring until I could no longer see any part of Alvin sticking out. Now all I had to do was wait for it to harden.

Meanwhile I threw the empty cement bags in the tub and torched them with a match. When there was nothing but ash left, I dipped the tub in the water over the side of the boat until it sank. The bucket and hoe soon followed. Now, beside the coffin, there was no trace of my supplies left on board.

As per the instruction on the cement bags, I waited. It seemed like a day and a half, but it was actually more like four hours. It was getting on to five a.m. when I tested the cement with my finger. It was hard enough now. I unscrewed the last of the metal screws that held the form together and laid them on the deck. The sheet metal panels came apart easily and one by one I lowered them over the side where they sank into oblivion. Alvin 's chunk of cement lay there on the bow awaiting taps. I didn't know how to play the bugle and wouldn't have if I could.

In the distance I could see storm clouds forming and they seemed to be coming my way. I had to make this quick and get back home.

“So long, Alvin ,” I said and pushed on the slab. It didn't budge. I stood up and braced myself with a better foothold. I leaned in with my shoulder and pushed with all I had. Still it wouldn't budge. The clouds were getting closer and I could see sheets of rain falling in the distance. If I was going to get rid of Alvin I was going to have to use my head instead of my back.

I stepped back behind the wheel and started the engine. With a smooth forward motion I gunned the throttle and the boat started slowly forward. All I had to do now was get a good running start and make a sharp turn and Alvin, slab and all, would slid off into Davy Jones Locker. I started my initial turn just as the rain and wind hit the boat. It bobbed up and down in the surf like a toy boat in a bathtub. The slab remained where it was. I turned it sharp in the opposite direction hoping to jar it loose. I did.

It slid the opposite way just as a huge wave crashed over the bow. The slab slid backwards and landed with a crash on the deck. Old wood creaked and snapped as the heavy slab broke through the deck and continued below through the hull. The boat nosed forward and tilted down at a sharp angle. Water rushed up at my feet and soon I was waste deep in the cold ocean waters. I slid down the deck, scraping my leg on a jagged piece of splintered deck. My leg spurted blood and the pool around me was soon a bright crimson. It gushed out into the open sea. It couldn't have taken more than two minutes for the craft to disappear beneath the waves. I hadn't even had time to slip into my life jacket. It and everything else disappeared beneath the waves.

I bounced about in the surf like a bobber on a fishing line. Just as quickly as the storm had overtaken me, it moved off toward shore and left me floating there several miles from the marina. The only satisfaction I had was knowing Alvin would not get Stella. Now neither would I.

The sun was just peaking over the horizon when I noticed the first white-tipped dorsal fin sticking up above the water.